Transylvanian Saxons

The Transylvanian Saxons are the descendants of ethnic Germans who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards. King Geza II of Hungary, who reigned from 1141 to 1162, initiated the German settlement of Transylvania with the goal of defending the southeastern border of the country. Most of the Germans came from Franconia and the western Holy Roman Empire, but they were all given the name "Saxons" after the Saxony region. The German community in Romania mostly adhered to either Lutheran Protestantism or Catholicism, and they mostly spoke Standard German, with some speaking Romanian or Hungarian. By 1939, the German community had 786,000 members, but this number was reduced to 36,000 by 2011 due to the post-World War II exodus of ethnic Germans from non-Germanic countries.